Recovery
by Waldo
Summary: Two short pieces focusing on John's recovery after 'Conversion'.
1. Complex and Simple

**Title:** Complex and Simple

**Author**: Waldo.

**Pairing**: Sheppard/Beckett)

**Words:** 465

**Rating:** PG

**Summary**: Complex eyes, simple words.

John was willing himself to lay still. His instincts to fight and run and return to the nest were becoming overwhelming. He'd woken to find that they'd brought him home and that he was in hard leather restraints, chained to the infirmary bed. The irrational parts of his brain rebelled and kicked and screeched and fought uselessly against his bonds until he exhausted himself and passed out.

When the very first inkling of sanity creept in, it told him that if that was what his instincts told him to do, it was best that he remained restrained.

"Ah, waking up, are we?"

John looked up at him, trying to focus. As much as he'd mutated, his brain still couldn't comprehend what his now-complex eyes were now showing him. He squinted, trying to make the thirty-two Carson's in front of him coalesce into one man. It didn't work. He let his head fall back onto the pillow. He closed his eyes, trying to force the headache to abate. Trying to still his instincts.

He could hear Carson sigh and then the beeping of the monitors over his head as Carson made some adjustments.

He felt the edge of the bed dip as Carson sat on the edge of the mattress. "Good morning, John. I'm glad you're waking up, it's been a few days since you've been terribly lucid. Can you tell me how you're feeling?"

John just shook his head. Not really sure if he meant that he couldn't speak or that he wouldn't.

Carson put a hand on his shoulder. "John, I need to get a few photos. We have to document your improvement. It's been a little less than a week and already the scaling has reduced by eleven percent, but we need to keep track, make sure the changes don't go faster than your body can handle and to be sure that you do make a complete recovery."

The idea of a permanent record of him looking like this, of having lost control, terrified and angered him. He pulled away as far as his restraints would allow and tried to shift onto his side. To turn his back to Carson and his camera.

When he couldn't hide well enough he struggled and screamed, pulling so hard on the wrist cuffs that Carson held his hands down, immobilizing him further. Infuriating him further.

He never heard Carson call for the sedative and only barely felt it break through the scaly skin on his arm. As he faded out he could hear Carson explain to someone, "He doesn't want anyone to see him like this." And just as he drifted off he heard Carson whisper, "If not one other cell were to repair itself, John…I would still see the man I love."

John stopped struggling


	2. Sounds of Sanity

**Title:** Sounds of Sanity

**Author:** Waldo.

**Pairing**: Sheppard/Beckett

**Words:** 421

**Rating:** PG

**Summary:** The drugs in his system made him listless and foggy. The retrovirus that remained entwined with his DNA made him wakeful and agitated.

The drugs in his system made him listless and foggy. The retrovirus that remained entwined with his DNA made him wakeful and agitated.

He wanted to sleep. He wanted to drift off and wake in a few weeks as himself. But he was too restless to sleep now. It was discomfiting, the urge to lay still with his eyes closed, but his absolute inability to actually fall asleep. Carson had said that he'd slept and been sedated for almost a week already, which was making it hard for his body to adjust, to let him sleep and wake normally quite yet.

So he lay there listening to Carson talk. For the first five days he barely understood anything he was saying, but the Scottish lilt was a constant, a calming anchor to the world he struggled to return to. He didn't need to find the energy or clarity to answer right now. He just needed to listen.

Gentle fingers were going through his hair and he just lay back to listen. "I know that the idea of being stuck here for a few weeks sounds like pure and total hell to someone like you, but we'll try to make it as bearable as we can, alright?" Carson laid his free hand over John's still-scaly, bluish-green one.

John dredged up the energy to nod just a little under the hand that still pet his hair. If he could sleep for those two weeks it might not be bad at all. But he couldn't find the strength to say that.

"Anything you can think of that'll make this any easier on you, love?"

John flipped his hand over, capturing Carson's in his own, careful that the talons that replaced his nails didn't poke or scratch and squeezed. Now that he wasn't violent and that he was starting to show at least some traces of understanding, Carson had been spending a lot of time at his bedside, holding his hand or stroking his hair or rubbing his back and just talking to him. He'd read to him from War and Peace – John couldn't find the strength or nerve to tell him that the book bored him senseless – and fill him in on Atlantis gossip – Zelenka and McKay? He'd have to follow up on that one when he felt better. And more than any drug in the universe, these were the things that kept John calm and marginally sane.

His voice sounded rusty and exhausted when he finally whispered, "Just keep talking to me."


End file.
